make-json is is too destructive

[rmpel]

Reading the documentation;

[--purge]
Whether to purge the strings that were extracted from the original source file. Defaults to true, use --no-purge to skip the removal.
[--update-mo-files]
Whether MO files should be updated as well after updating PO files. Only has an effect when used in combination with --purge.

Considering my observations, --purge is the default.

But WHY is this a thing in the first place.

I understand why Javascript strings would be removed from the MO file, as the MO is used in PHP only, however, removing the strings from the PO file removes the translations, and thus next run, from the JSON as well.

THIS IS BROKEN.

--no-purge should be the default
--purge should only remove from MO, never from PO.

[swissspidy]

Hi there,

Thanks for opening this issue. Sorry to hear you had an unpleasant experience while working with the wp i18n family of commands.

Considering my observations, --purge is the default.

That is correct. As the documentation says:

Defaults to true, use --no-purge to skip the removal.

---

This topic has come up before:

• Consider making make-json not destructive by default #144
• Update MO files when purging #126

Now that the JS translation approach is fairly established in WP and we also have l10n.php translation files (which are preferred over MO files), it probably makes sense to revisit this, perhaps in a more holistic way:

• .po should always be the source of truth and allow for deterministic generation of mo, php, and json translation files
• make-mo and make-php should never include JS-only strings to keep them small.
• this removes the need for the --purge and --update-mo-files flags

This only works of course if leveraging the WP JS translation approach. If you expect your MO files to contain JS-only strings for some reason, then maybe we need to provide an opt-out.